How Babies Are Made

When we were first researching the process of buying sperm, I requested information from several different sperm banks, and one of them (I can't remember which exactly) sent us a free video. We eagerly sat down to watch it one evening, thinking that it would provide a good explanation of how sperm donation and freezing and buying and shipping works. Instead, the video showed an interview with a straight couple who had used sperm from this particular bank to conceive their daughter. The clear message from the movie was that using donor sperm was a fine choice to make and that if we decided to go through with it, no one would ever know that we hadn't conceived our baby the old-fashioned way. The dad in the video was especially insistent that his daughter would never have any way of knowing that he wasn't her genetic father and that he felt great about the fact that they'd been so successful with donor sperm.

Clearly, this was not the video for us (nor was it the sperm bank for us), but it did bring home the point that I always wanted us to be entirely truthful with our children about how they were made. While there was never any risk of concealing the fact that Lena and I did not make our babies in the "old-fashioned way," we planned to be exceptionally open and up-front with our kids about their conception, from the moment they were born. Of course, in the early months of their lives, telling the kids their conception story served no purpose beyond allowing us to practice telling it, but that was reason enough for us to do it. When Jaz started babbling, "da-da, da-da, da-da" at 10 months old, we would correct him and say, "do-nor, do-nor, do-nor." Which is to say that we have taken every opportunity to be completely upfront with our kids about the fact that they don't have a dad. That does not mean, however, that our kids really understand what it means for them to have a sperm donor.

Luke and Jaz were 2 or 3 when we started using the seed analogy to explain conception.

"To make a baby, you need a seed from a man, and an egg from a woman. Because Mom and Mama had lots of eggs, but no seeds, a very nice man gave us some of his seeds. He didn't want to be a dad, but he wanted to help us make a family. The man who gave us his seeds is your donor."

Over the years, the kids have shown us their lack of understanding of this concept a few times, referring to the donor as "the donut," or asking us how we knew that the "owner" was giving us the "right kind of flowers." They have never seemed especially interested in their conception story or who this "very nice man" is. Just the other day, I asked Luke and Jaz directly if they ever felt curious about their donor (they do now, at nearly 6, understand that the donor gave us his sperm), and Jaz responded, "nope. Never." And Luke said, "I certainly don't feel curious right now." We've shared with them the information that we think they might find interesting (the donor's favorite color (black)), his favorite animal (dolphins), his favorite foods (cereal and chicken)), but for the most part these little tidbits fall on deaf ears. They just don't care about it yet.


A few weeks ago we checked out some "how babies are made" types of books from the library, and through doing so have discovered the part of the conception story that the kids are curious about right now. They are completely fascinated by the pictures (drawings and photographs) of babies developing in-utero. Perhaps this is the exact scenario that coined the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words." Because now that they've seen it, they really get it. This understanding has not increased, for them, the significance of where the sperm that we used to make them came from, but there's no longer any question about if they know how babies are made (minus any sexual reference).

This weekend, after learning that our new baby is a boy, Jaz made a book for Lena ("Mama") about the baby growing inside of her. Here it is:

the cover

sperm meets egg

the baby is beginning to grow some legs

the baby now has arms and fingers

the baby now has ears and a penis

the baby is born

The last page looks to be a duplicate of the first page:

Jaz explains, "well, then it starts all over again, this time with our girl baby." That made me laugh. I actually love the whole book and think he did an excellent job of showing the different stages of fetal development (he drew it all from memory, not consulting the books we have on hand).

This weekend we did begin to get into a discussion of genetics, after one of the kids--either Luke or Jaz--said, "maybe this time we'll get a brown-skinned baby." Lena and I explained that while there are many things we won't know about our baby until he's born (his eye color, his hair color, how big he is, what his nose looks like, if his pinky finger is straight or crooked, the exact shade of his skin), there are some things that we do know because of how genetics work. The baby will not have brown skin because the egg and the sperm that made him didn't have any brown-skin genes. The kids were only mildly interested, but I wonder if this will be the beginning of them questioning the significance of genetic relationships. If so, we'll be ready with lots and lots of answers.